Where Did "We" Go?

“WHERE DID ‘WE’ GO?”

Addressing Tom Friedman’s grammatical-metaphysical question.

Part I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=1

Friedman here compares loss of ‘legitimacy” in Israel, when its Prime Minister Rabin was shot by a West Bank Jewish fanatic for carrying out the Oslo land-for-peace agreement, with the “poisonous political environment America and Barak Obama face today. We’ve lost “we”-ness. The remorseless attitude Rabin’s shooter maintained decisively ruptured the grammatical fabric of “being an Israeli.” He hates to write about it, but having seen that, he doesn’t want to, but is, seeing it here. But there are several things wrong with this comparison.



First, Friedman’s use of ‘legitimacy’ here reflects a textualist metaphysics, as if command power flowed from the machinery of an authorizing process
 to loss of “command power” (cf. J. Atlas), disruption of inner archetypal bond between president (as fetal hero) and people (as “we” siblings in the womb-surround).

The poisoned atmosphere (AIR  North pole) Friedman notes was evident on the floor of the House 10.29 (Tuesday) when Rep. Greyson, (D. Fla.), equated Republican Health Care plan with “Don’t Get Sick, or Die Quick”. This prompted calls for him to apologize or be disciplined (“not the kind of behavior permitted on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives”), but he appeared on Rachael Maddow Wed. p.m. decidedly unrepentant and ready to carry on. If both were in the same room, one would have to back down or go down. It’s that bad.

What Poisons The Atmosphere Here ? (Q.: Are Vaccinators Human? – or “something”)

-to venomously dismiss anti-vaccine arguments out of hand, accompanied by misrepresentation, smears, insults,-- to the point of demonizing the mentality itself – is projection-reversal group ego defense of the vaccinators. (“Just get your damned shot..” one Youtube health care spokeswoman snarled.)

- - This metaphorically poisons (for the metaphysics, see below), because the addressee cannot rightly reply to any point, without confronting assumptions proceeding about themselves which would effectively negate what is said in advance as worthy only of morons, idiots or other defectives. (The metaphor turns metaphysical as the excoriations lead to injections.)

-Meanwhile, the vaccinators insisting that ‘science’ has proven vaccination ‘works’, usually offering small pox and polio as outstanding examples of scourges thankfully reduced now. But critical examination shows these are arguably not from vaccinations, and these may actually be spawning re-combinant side effects, causing auti-immune related disorders to proliferate. As with these, since mass inoculations with live virus particles began in the mid-20th century: chronic fatgue immune dysfunction, fibromyalgia, lupus, MS. ALS, type-one (auto-immune) diabetes, Guillain-Barre, Crohn’s disease, Steve Johnson’s syndrome, Bell’s palsy (from Dr. Len Horowitz). “Science” does not know that the rise of these, along with AIDS, Ebola, Marburg and other deadly viruses, is not perhaps traceable to genetic mutations arising from vaccine contamination. It is doubtful this could be known, in principle, as the scale of molecular bio-chemical interactions involved falls below possible observation (e.g., a random electron jumps orbit, disrupts a DNA code).


Len Horowitz shows that the broad swath through Africa where the small pox vaccine is alleged to have been be so successful in eliminating that disease, exactly overlaps the path through the continent followed by AIDS 20 years later.

The “something” that comes in here is a metaphysical/functional reversal. The vaccinator’s conscious intent is ‘protecting against disease’, and this is technologically effected by artificial stimulation of the auto-immune system. Vaccines administer a ‘pre-emptive’ attack on a hypothetical ‘invader’ of the blood stream, as a line of defense.

This way of thinking repeats at the level of neuro-cellular blood manipulation, by vaccines, the same argument template as initiating pre-emptive, ‘sting’ attacks on ‘domestic terrorists’. Both involve taking pre-emptive, systemic irreversible intrusive action against enemies postulated as ideas. This amounts to them attacking something in themselves projected into, and reversed, in/by the Other: attacking The Other as the Dark (Collectively unconscious) side of themselves. A project impossible to complete as long as the Dark side remains split off from consciousness. But the functional thinking of the vaccinators “squares”, and insures, that The Dark Side is forever split off, at least as far as a preemptive wall of artificially induced can make it. The conjunction of “protecting” by “attacking with, in order to arouse defenses” guarantees reproduction of as much ‘splitting’ is needed to manipulate the population.

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APPROACH of The Black Sun (“The Return of Nibiru”)

AMERICA ON THE BRINK
-poised to transit: From neurotic perseveration… To full-fledge psychosis

in the mentality that sustains historical group-process.


Chief example: Use of LEFT – RIGHT (liberal – conservative; Republican – Democrat) as political rhetoric alignment. These do not apply to present issues: mandated vaccinations for health workers; parentage and birth certificate of Barack Obama; national security


Markers of the psychotic turn:
-open, unregretted viuolence (acting on irresistable impulses)
-40,000 troops sent to Afghanistan; fake polls on Iran nukes (BP&SB)
-state mandated vaccine … tips the hand to fascist/communist type authority, vs the self-determined will of the people.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2009/10/01/segments/141828
Brian Lehrer
Vacillating on Vaccination Major Interlude
Thursday, October 01, 2009
• Comments [42]
Orly Avitzur, M.D., medical adviser to Consumer Reports, talks about the magazine finding that many Americans are unsure about getting the swine flu vaccine.

Creepiest, most blood-chilling radio segment I’ve ever heard. 1. Sound of her voice: little girl snake-brain tweet. 2. Lehrer’s dancing genocidalism – cutesy cut-off/control of dissenting pov. 3. Interaction (union*) of the two: double (~S/S*)^. 4. As content of consciousness: snakebrain anima curled around arrested development animus.

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Major Interlude
Major Interlude
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The Ideal Language Method of Philosophy

Wherein talk* about a language ideal for given purposes, such as statement of fact (fact-stating), is used as a proxy for, to reconstruct, assertions of a metaphysical sort – what reality is ultimately like – as assertions about requirements for a language (L*) ideal for the purpose, such as statements of fact per se.

Analogous*: “In an alternate, ideal world….”, such and such would be the case. “In a language designed explicitly to state facts, truly or falsely,.." this and that would be presupposed.

The reason an ideally reconstructed L* for fact stating discourse is necessary

The grammar of unreconstructed discourse permits simple logical errors to be made, illustrated by fallacies. “The apostles were 12; Peter and Paul were apostles; therefore Peter and Paul were 12” is a fallacy of transferring the predicate of a class taken inclusively, to a predicate of members of a class taken distributively. The distinction, being formal, i.e., pertaining to predication as such, requires formal, token-specific recognition in order to avoid fallacy (inferring false conclusions from true premises). Thus, the Greek epsilon is conventionally used for class membership (‘x e a” = df. “x is a member of the class a). The sign “->” is used here for the ‘horseshoe’ (U turned on its left side) for class inclusion (“a -> b” =df. “class a included in class b”). The formal link between class logic and predicate logic is: a -> b  (x)(Ax -> Bx) Read: “a is included in b if and only if, for entity x, if x is A, then x is B”, where A and B are predicates defining the classes a and b respectively. (“x e a” =df. “x is A”).

Roughly, the metaphysical implication is that predicates of classes, including numbers (signs of which can be defined by assuming classes, as Cantor did, and abstractive definition, developed by Russell), can be defined in terms of predicates of individuals. General objects, such as ‘classes’, are removed from the category of undefined, token-marked primitive discourse about reconstructed (‘ideal’) representative discourse. No special terms are required for them, as a primitive category, in order to complete the account of formal truth in simplest (primitive) terms. And, since number signs can be defined through class signs (as classes of classes)

In olden metaphysical terms, “there are no classes, as such’; statements about classes can be theoretically re-written, mutatis mutandis as statements predicating attributes of individuals, salva veritate . This is a reconstruction of (one strand of) classical Platonism”, hypothesizing the existence of general objects requiring higher-level formal token-type recognition in a language adequate to reality given IN language. This was one way Plato’s Theory of Forms remained in ideal language philosophy: token-markers for general objects, such as classes (sets, relations), hypothesized as primitive (undefined).

The issue was: does the ideal language contain undefined descriptive constants, F’A, of higher individual type level, when the x in “Ax” is ‘level one (1)’? Assuming the principle of acquaintance*, tokens of type level 1, xi, are qualitative singularities concretely exemplified in experience, communicated by signs, S*. The predicates of xi are the names of qualities perceived by sense-perception; thus, if “A” stands for the quality of blue color, ‘x is A’, called a function, is said to be ‘satisfied’ by any designator substituted for ‘x’ for which “is blue” is true. This substitution of “function”, taken from arithmetic, is responsible for confusing ideal language philosophy. It goes with Quine’s “open sentence”, as if “the logical point of view” were self-explanatory, but misleadingly designed from the outset. This is where resolution of ambiguity by invoking text-vs- token in communication comes in; further pursuit of this here, however, would lead too far afield.

It is clear on the face of it that several formal hierarchies of sign-uses interlace common discourse. Each of the 5 senses gets its distinct quality name.

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Metaphysical discourse (Ex. “time does not exist”) is reconstructed as statements about the syntax and interpretation of its highest level categories of representation (Ex. “the ideal language L contains no undefined descriptive constants referring to relations before-after-simultaneous”).

Criteria of adequacy of S* as ideal L* : consistency (no contradictions; if S*, then ~~S*: reconstructs “Oneness of the universe”); thorough-going relatedness (all S* stand in systematic relation; universality of the laws of causation); completeness (everything it is possible to experience can be articulated in S*). The theory of logical types is required to satisfy the condition of consistency. Unless predications over totalites are stratified, according to token types presupposed by predicates A, B, there can be no formal guarantee than what is deduced from Ax ->will not contradict what is deduced from Bx-> when a e b.

S*1 All red areas on the board are square (x)(Rx -> Sx)
S*2 Some red areas are wet. (Ex)(Rx . Wx)
S*3 No square areas on the board are wet. (x)(Sx -> ~Wx)

Instantiating S*2 for an individual, a -> Ra. Wa (“a is red and a is wet”)
Substituting a in S*1, with Ra entails Sa;
Substituting a in S*3, with Sa entails ~Wa.
Wa , ~Wa (“a is wet and not wet”)

The contradiction implicit in the conjunction of S*1-3 is drawn out and made explicit by the otherwise purely redundant and pointless formal apparatus. It’s purpose, and raison de etre, is to do just that: frame the logical components in scattered discourse in order to exhibit connections and inconsistencies. Clearly, if this is not done, and pursuit of knowledge continues apace on the big checkerboard, contradictions implicit in different assumptions made by disparate enquirers with come to exist and into conflict. Therefore it is adaptive, if nothing else, to elaborate a formal logical apparatus. However, from the time of Plato’s Timaeus, and before -- whatever lay behind the myths it recounts as already olden – it has been almost universally held that there was something more at stake, even metaphysically speaking (as would have to be the case, if it were true at all), in coming to logic (or Logos, Word; but these were anticipatory tokens, losing symbolic


The Two Grammars: philosophical versus ordinary language

Russell’s Theory of logical types was constructed to avoid the occurrence of a-logical, improperly formed entrees in valid deductive argument forms. As punctuation is to written sentences, so ‘if-then’, ‘either-or’, and ‘therefore’’s are to verbal logical content. Rules of verbal use, embodied in ordinary language grammar, are notoriously so loose, vague, polymorphously perverse that, without stipulation of an aim, or intent, of use to be made in translating from spoken to written discourse, a mere assemblage of words as sound inscriptions cannot be rationally assumed to have magically arranged themselves in logical-mathematical propositions by an unseen grammarian.

The details of the theory of logical types prohibits the construction “all textual representation is ambiguous” from expressing a proposition. Though the form of words is grammatical, they are a-logical. Not false; neither true-nor-false; without logical sense, ‘senseless’, taken strictly. As Kant had already pointed out with his famous dictum “existence is not a predicate”, a categorical distinction must be drawn between grammar of ordinary, spoken language (which can emphasize “IS!”, predicatively), and philosophical, or logically adequate grammar. A logically adequate grammar must be immune from corruption of discourse in any steps of a deductive argument chain that would interrupting the transfer of truth of premises to conclusion. If, to this notion of the philosophical grammar of a non-corrupt logical language for what exists, is appended the single simple rule of interpretation called by Gustav Bergman “The principle of acquaintance PA”, following Russell: the lowest level predicates of conscious content, individuals of type 1 (of a logically adequate language) range over momentary quality-quantity configurations, or sense data. This reconstructs the empiricist, phenomenal position of modern metaphysics, since John Locke grammatized the causal theory of perception in the emerging post-Aristotelian atomic-molecular understanding of matter. Logical grammar interpreted by the PA is the simplest, most coherent and systematic framework of discussing reality. (Logical empiricism).

The particular form of sign-use ordinary grammar permits, but logical discourse must screen out, are predicates (functions, F) whose arguments x (as in “F’x” for “x is F”) is allowed to include “F”, itself (F’F). Such is the case, for instance, for “predicate”. One can say “color” is a predicate of colors, “word” a predicate of words; can one say “predicate” as applied to attributed words, is a predicate? – a predicate of itself? If so, a logical distinction will divide predicates that are, from predicates that are not, predicates of themselves, from which Russell’s paradox follows: let Normal” be “the predicate of all predicates not predicates of themselves”; then Normal is Normal if and only if Normal is Not Normal. (The predicate of all predicates is not predicable of itself – is normal – if and only if it is not predicable of itself – not normal.) The problem leading to this, Russell diagnosed, began with the notion that “predicate” was a predicate, though undoubtedly an identifiable grammatical constituent of every sentence.